


Through, Darkly

by drvology



Category: Batman (Unspecified canon), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:30:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drvology/pseuds/drvology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batman stares inside and Bruce Wayne stares back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through, Darkly

**Author's Note:**

> B:TAS is my favorite Batverse incarnation; it's become my default setting when imagining the characters &c. That established, I think the fic I write can be aptly labeled 'canon & time nonspecific.'  
> → Written in an hour for 60_minute_fics challenge group @ LJ || 020907 Prompt #1 _Reversal of Fortune -- Take your favorite pair and reverse their roles—in bed, socially, career-wise, or any other way your ~~devious~~ creative mind can come up with._

When he looks through the glass he sees--standing there surprised, hand cupping the elbow of a woman who'd near-fainted in alarm--Bruce Wayne.

Tux, white tie, tails. Glint of cufflinks and wide blue eyes guileless. Standing back with the rest, keeping his distance, unsure of how to react.

Batman is exposed.

He is on a windswept outer terrace thirty storeys up. His cape tugs and twists and feels brutally weighty; it burdens where it grows from his shoulders, tests the motionless stance of his spread legs.

He can't prevent the squint of his eyes, the unwanted strain. Batman stares inside and Bruce Wayne stares back. He'd known of what had happened, here. A tip on a trip. Now Twoface and his thugs are in the wagon parked on the gritty street far below and the circling police copter is angling away; it will follow the convoy all the way to Arkham.

Some charity banquet, some thousands-per-plate rubbery chicken and undercooked asparagus. Some easy pickings, some other night with people needing to be saved.

This was as high profile as it got, combination of this all messed in together. Do-gooding and society celebrity, flashbulbs and spectacle, a mystery hero and the taut pang-promise of savagery.

The wind swells and it cuts him, cold. It shivers down into him, where the cowl gaps and the suitseams strain.

Inside Commissioner Gordon is giving his statement to a blue, more victim and witness than his appointed duty. Barbara is on his arm, dainty and stunning in a sharp black dress, and her eyes don't linger on Batman in the shadows.

She'd taken out one of the goons with quick-thinking and a quicker spiked heel; Batman would have to thank her, remonstrate that she'd risked being seen as anything but Barbara.

Reporters on scene are closing in. He meets Bruce Wayne's gaze a final time, nods once. Glass shards whine beneath his feet--three of the floor-to-ceiling windows were busted out, small price to pay after a hail of bullets and bomb shitstorm--and he turns on his heels, leaps out into yawning sky.

Batman makes his way, feels hollow, utterly lost.

Later Bruce finds him, waiting on a rooftop so high the clouds in front of the moon look like mountains, the sea endless, and the shore a watercolor silver line.

Gloveless hands are cool, burrow in and unsnap, relieve the oppression of the flap-fly cape he can't quite control, caress the cowl from his face in a sweep of gentle tenderness.

They kiss until breathless. Bruce's fingers comb his hair, soothe and straighten from its muss tangled at his neck. He relinquishes, burrows and rounds into Bruce's embrace, glad to be Batman no more.

Necessary, the ruse, and he hates it. The pretense, the pretend. Being this, stealing this place and this power. Taking it from the one he wants, believes in, needs to be both--for him, for Bruce. He knows who he is, who Bruce is--all--understands that few others do and no one else can. That sometimes this has to happen, smokescreens and allay.

Bruce whispers _Dick_ against his ear. _Thank you_ with the hold of his nape in a strong hand. _Just you, just me_ with the press of their bodies, the wet slide of their lips, shed of their outer skins. Hollowness filled, each other, found.

The wind is warmer, a touch, heralds the coming dawn.


End file.
